Thursday, November 12, 2009

Toy Drawing 8: Don't Forget The Space Behind the Face

A lot of cartoonists tend not to see space. We see fills or positive spaces. Areas of interest to us are eyes, mouths, ears, arms, fingers, but we sometimes neglect the big spaces between the fills. And those negative spaces are needed.I've noticed when students are copying drawings from Preston Blair or old cartoons, or even life drawing there is a tendency to shrink the open spaces.On a 3/4 angle, you see more space behind the eye that's close to you than the one that's farther away.Chuck Jones is a master of balancing fills with space. And of using contrasting shapes.He doesn't pile balls on balls, yet he uses all the classic 40s animation principles.In this earlier model sheet of the bird you can tell the WB artists are just trying to get the basic principles down and it looks more like balls on balls. Chuck's more interesting individual style developed after he got confident of his principles. Then he stopped piling up balls.Many cartoonists today (including me, when I'm not thinking about it) draw the whole face filling the head shape, with no space around it. This makes the image cramped and unfocused. It also leaves no room for the features to move if the character needs to raise his eyebrows or open his mouth wide.

And it's wrong. Characters have craniums and you see a lot of brain space behind the face. Or you should. Your face is well in front of your head.Below, I have exaggerated the space and perspective in Elroy's face.Even in an extreme close up where perspective is distorted you can see that the face doesn't take up a lot of space within the whole head. - and that there are spaces between the features. The aren't all crammed together.
Drawing these toys and trying to capture the construction, perspective and spaces oughta make it sink in.

Its interesting that you combine Chuck Jones and Clampetts as expamples. Its good because Jones principles provide sophistication and top design while Clampett provides rich lifelike animated poses.

The interesting thing however is that while you admire the two guys. From what I've heard the two grew to dislike each other in real life because of creative disputes. Jones was so furious about his experience with Clampett he refused to bring in him up in an his Autobiography Chuck Amuck when recounting his days at Warner Bros.

Both talented nonetheless just kind of weird when you talk about the behind the scenes relationship aspect of it.

Thanks for telling us about space around the face, lol. I notice it lot when i was drawing my pics and they were all crammed together and i did not have any space what so ever, I think it was that i made my eyes way 2 big and i could not even put my other features in like eyebrows, etc, and i had little space for my cheeks. Thank you so much for this advice and i will adjust my drawings and will think of space when i draw, Mr. K

Thanks for another instructive post, John. Living out in the boonies as I do, I am entirely self taught in the art of cartooning. Your posts are helpful and encouraging to me.Actually my greatest "Aha" moment was when I realized that I would not be able to look over every readers shoulder and explain the cartoon. It also helps to do cartoons with a specific person in mind as your target audience. Do you ever think about a target audience in your work?